In a world rocked by ominous threats from the South China Sea and the Korean peninsula to the Persian Gulf and an increasingly Islamized Europe, it’s easy to overlook one in our own front-yard: the unfolding catastrophe in Venezuela.

Thanks to the sustained socialist malfeasance of Hugo Chavez and his incompetent successor, Nicolas Maduro, a nation with the world’s largest oil reserves has been reduced to a state where its people are literally starving. Many are fleeing to neighboring nations where they are an increasingly destabilizing and unwelcome force.

So are the narco-traffickers and the hostile foreign powers that now operate with impunity in – and from – Venezuela.

Before this disaster metastasizes further, freedom-loving nations must intervene. The place to start is with an embargo on the despotic Venezuelan regime’s exports of crude oil and imports of gasoline and other refined products.